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MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

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Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#81

Post by echelon »

creaghpatr wrote: post #26
clement_b wrote: post #4

This is a very sad news for the city of Barcelona and for everyone involved in organizing or exhibiting. But that was the right choice. I'm wondering what's next to be cancelled.

Olympics are this summer, could be at risk if it hasn't been contained by then, especially given the proximity of Japan to China/mainland asia.

Could the Olympics be postponed a year? There's no president for this, but if the disease can't be contained, it seems prudent.

I was planning on visiting Japan this summer. Now I'm somewhat hesitant to do any travel.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#82

Post by [deleted] »

baddox wrote: post #59
kalipsosu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For flu, each sick person infects 1 person. So Ro is 1. This means no quarantine needed. But for covid-19 estimated Ro is around 2.5. So containing this virus requires quarantine. Also this is a novel virus which means this strain is new and may be unpredictable. Mutations may occur. We even not sure about source of the virus. If it spreads all over the world it could logarithmicly grow in number. Especially for unde…

I'm not a doctor or a public health expert, but it seems to be that unqualified uncertainty should not be used as justification for any action other than pursuing more information to qualify that uncertainty. Otherwise we would maximally quarantine any illness for which we are at all uncertain of an upper bound on its basic reproduction number or mortality.

[deleted]

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#83

Post by merqurio »

erentz wrote: post #45
merqurio wrote: post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

> The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1] We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate. This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears to be a high mortality rate. If you had to choose between being inf…

It makes sense total sense to compare, it's another respiratory virus, from a family of viruses already known. We must not reinvent the wheel when we know the dynamics of these viruses and the countermeasures to take.

The key metric that determines whether COVID-19 can establish and generate a sustained outbreak is it's ability to reproduce, "R", which represents the average number of individuals to which each transmitter transmits the virus.

- If "R" is greater than 1, the transmission may become sustained; - If “R” is less than 1, then the transmission will simply dissipate.

In the current outbreak, it represents an R of 2.2 [1], meaning that on average each patient has been spreading infection to 2.2 other people.

Only a little bit more than half of the infections should be avoided so that R falls below 1. Preventive isolation and the measures established by the protocols should be sufficient.

Besides, there is little evidence to suggest the presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19

[1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#84

Post by [deleted] »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #55
abc-xyz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China only had 144 flu-caused deaths in an entire year ( https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml ), meaning the Wuhan virus has already killed 7.8 times as many people as the flu kills in an entire year throughout China.

Hilarious, your source is an article that's criticizing China's statistical methods on flu deaths reporting. From your own source: "The statistical methods used by the Chinese CDC should be revised, as deaths from pneumonia caused by the flu, for example, are not counted, the observer said." If you ignore death by pneumonia, the deaths for coronavirus are very low too. "An analysis led by Chinese scientists published…

[deleted]

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#86

Post by jpdus »

merqurio wrote: post #83
erentz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1] We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate. This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears to be a high mortality rate. If you had to choose between being inf…

It makes sense total sense to compare, it's another respiratory virus, from a family of viruses already known. We must not reinvent the wheel when we know the dynamics of these viruses and the countermeasures to take. The key metric that determines whether COVID-19 can establish and generate a sustained outbreak is it's ability to reproduce, "R", which represents the average number of individuals to which each transm…

This is outdated information. Most newer studies put R0 >3 (e.g. [1]) and there are many well documentated cases outside of China now which confirm at least partial presymptomatic transmission (German cluster, Signapore Conference, British prisoners).

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.20021675v...

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#87

Post by jnurmine »

downerending wrote: post #39
Aperocky wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, except cases are not in exponential growth for a period of time already if you’ve been following closely. Right now it’s more or less linear

Hadn't looked for a few days. It does appear to be attenuating--hope that holds up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavi...

Not sure of attenuation since according to the Wikipedia page they are now excluding asymptomatic infections from the statistics, which lowers the number of confirmed.

The Wikipedia page says:

"On 6 February, the Chinese National Health Commission started to change how cases were reported – asymptomatic carriers, who tested positive for the virus but did not show clinical symptoms, would no longer be included in the number of confirmed cases. This had the effect of reducing the total number of cases reported, but also meant that potentially contagious individuals were ignored in reports."

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#88

Post by cm2187 »

erentz wrote: post #45
merqurio wrote: post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

> The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1] We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate. This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears to be a high mortality rate. If you had to choose between being inf…

The Spanish flu had a mortality of 10-20%. Everything points to this thing having a mortality similar to the seasonal flu.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#89

Post by downerending »

jnurmine wrote: post #87
downerending wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't looked for a few days. It does appear to be attenuating--hope that holds up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavi...

Not sure of attenuation since according to the Wikipedia page they are now excluding asymptomatic infections from the statistics, which lowers the number of confirmed. The Wikipedia page says: "On 6 February, the Chinese National Health Commission started to change how cases were reported – asymptomatic carriers, who tested positive for the virus but did not show clinical symptoms, would no longer be included in the…

Oh my. That's one way to get the numbers looking better.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#90

Post by retsibsi »

cm2187 wrote: post #88
erentz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1] We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate. This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears to be a high mortality rate. If you had to choose between being inf…

The Spanish flu had a mortality of 10-20%. Everything points to this thing having a mortality similar to the seasonal flu.

> Everything points to this thing having a mortality similar to the seasonal flu.

Can you justify this? I want to be convinced, because at the moment I think it's very optimistic. (There are different estimates for seasonal flu mortality, but it seems to be around 0.1%, so I'm assuming that's roughly the number you mean.)

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